IBM advanced analytics consultant Michael Nicholson and his team crunched data
from more than 250 rugby matches to determine the algorithm for IBM
TryTracker

Rugby union can be a tricky game to comprehend, even for die-hard supporters. But IBM TryTracker is designed to help navigate casual viewers and experts alike through the action, making sense of what they are watching and driving discussion about the key turning points and star performers.

Accessed through the Rugby Football Union’s website, IBM TryTracker provides rapid information – a momentum graph, most influential players and three areas for the two teams to target to achieve success – for England internationals. But how does it work?

Together with Opta – the world’s leading sports data company – IBM advanced analytics consultant Michael Nicholson and his team crunched data from more than 250 international matches in the five years in the build-up to IBM TryTracker's launch to determine their algorithm.

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“We set out to inform those who don’t know all that much about rugby. We want to help them understand and give them a way into the conversation,” says Mr Nicholson, a self-confessed “sport and maths geek”.

“My background is in deriving insight from big data, helping companies that are data rich and information poor and we treated TryTracker like that. Opta collected about 8,000 data points from each of those games. We worked out from all that data which events, by which players, in what places on the pitch, were most correlated with teams winning matches.

“By doing that analysis we were able to strip out most of the important features of the game – assigning a score to each contextualised event – while adhering to the three Vs of data: velocity, variety and volume. The most important for this project is velocity, because we need to be quick to respond to the real-time event.”

And IBM TryTracker is quick – just an impressive 15 seconds behind the broadcast. After closed-doors trials in the 2012 QBE Internationals, IBM TryTracker made its official debut when England hosted Scotland in the 2013 RBS 6 Nations, a match where the hosts opened up their campaign with a convincing 38-18 victory.

The momentum was with Stuart Lancaster’s side for almost all the game, and it showed as much with IBM TryTracker’s graph.

With his saltire hat on, the Dunfermline-born Nicholson found the result painful but, with his professional cap on, he was delighted – as the algorithm worked.

“As a Scot, working hand in hand with the RFU means I’m deep in enemy territory,” the 30-year-old jokes. “England smashed us in that game, and our analytics reflected that. While I was depressed at the defeat, my analytical side was very happy.”

But you don't have to be an analytics "geek" to use IBM TryTracker – in fact, it is designed for the casual viewer.

As Nicholson says: “There will be plenty of information for the stats geeks, but we are essentially providing a way into the game for everyone.”